It is very common to create a DOM fragment, attach it to the DOM, and further manipulate it. Such manipulation often takes this form:

$("#foo").append("<hr>").find("> hr:last-child").click(...)

or

$("<hr>").appendTo("#foo").click(...)

(Please note the extra work done in the first example.)

Sometimes, though, the selector for the bit of the DOM to attach to is more complicating, perhaps requiring .find-like behavior. The first example is easily modified. Here,

context

$(".foo", context).append("<hr>").find("> hr:last-child").click(...)

The second, example, is not as easy. .appendTo does not take a second argument, leading to more verbose code:

var deeper = $(".foo", context);  
$("<hr>").appendTo(deeper).click(...)

Observe that there is no clean way to create and append a fragment and keep working with it when the DOM attachment point requires context.

I propose that appendTo be given the ability to take a context element with the filter, leading to beautiful code like this:

$("<hr>").appendTo(".foo", context).click(...)